North Carolina Is the Only State Where Women Can't Withdraw Consent After Intercourse Has Begun

Thanks to a 1979 state Supreme Court case ruling, North Carolina is the only state where women can't withdraw consent during intercourse if it's already underway and they've given previous consent. The issue is under renewed scrutiny after two North Carolina women in the past two months shared accounts of withdrawing consent during sex and then discovering their alleged attackers wouldn't be charged with sexual assault. Now, Democratic state senator Jeff Jackson is hoping to change this with a new law, Senate Bill 553.

As The Fayetteville Observer reports, a woman in Fayetteville, North Carolina says she consented to a sexual encounter with a man but told him to stop when he turned violent during intercourse; he allegedly continued having intercourse despite her objections. When the survivor looked further into her case, she found that what happened to her wasn't defined as "rape" because of a 1979 court ruling by the North Carolina Supreme Court in State v. Way. In the case, the court ruled that if a person consents to a sexual act and withdraws consent during that same sexual act, it's not legally considered rape.

“It’s really stupid,” the survivor said to The Fayetteville Observer of the law. “If I tell you 'no' and you kept going, that’s rape.”

In May, a woman from Raleigh shared her story with local news after law enforcement officials reduced rape charges against her husband to assault because of the 1979 ruling. Another case made local news in 2010 after the lawyer for the defendant in a sexual assault case used State v. Way to argue that a teenager had given consent before a sexual encounter with his client — meaning his client couldn't have raped the teen in the eyes of the law, even if she had withdrawn consent later.